Here’s a new piece on a well-worn topic:
Keyboard conflicts occur every day across the United States. A not-infrequent outcome is that for political reasons, people cast away into outer cyberdarkness friends and even relatives: they are “unfriended.” Unfriending represents an aspect of an ever-developing public policy issue of Americans isolating themselves into hives of like-minded others who have no tolerance for anyone who falls outside their political ideology…
In October 2020, NPR explored the subject of political divides, which included the act of unfriending, in “’Dude, I’m Done’: When Politics Tears Families And Friendships Apart.” It reported: “Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, said political polarization is more intense now than at any point in modern history. Nearly 80% of Americans now have ‘just a few’ or no friends at all across the aisle, according to Pew. And the animosity goes both ways.”
It’s my observation that some portion of that 80% of Americans with few or no friends across the aisle are in that situation because they purposely avoid people who disagree with them. But others have had it happen naturally, either because where they live practically everyone is on the same page, or because that’s true of their families or ethnic groups or those who share their interests.
For example, I’ve never shunned people who disagree with me, but because of family, demography, and general interests (the arts, for example), I don’t happen to know many conservatives. That makes me the opposite of the people described in that paragraph I just quoted because almost all my friends are from across the aisle. Even when I became conservative myself, that only increased the number of my conservative friends by a tiny bit. Of course, I know a lot of conservatives online, but we’re talking about regular friends in the non-cyber dimension.
And I never had that shunning impulse in the first place; if I break off with a person, it’s for other reasons than the political, and I’m not a big one for using cutoff even in those cases. In fact, I’ve only used it once that I can recall, and that was more of a mutual thing. Since I’m not on any social media such as Facebook or Twitter, I don’t have to deal with the unfriend phenomenon.
Not online, anyway. I’ve dealt with it in person, though, with some people deciding not to speak to me anymore. Most of my friends and family, however, are able to talk politics with me in a relatively respectful way, or we just agree not to talk politics at all. With that latter group, we’ve tried such discussions and come to the conclusion that there’s just no point, because they just stir up frustration and even anger to no avail. After all, a mind is a difficult thing to change.
I have no doubt that shunning happens on both sides, but it’s my very strong impression that it’s far more common coming from the left. And these days it can even be at the hands of someone who never used to be a leftist but instead was just a regular old Democrat. Now such people are more likely to take a much more radical view than before, and to be more intense about it as well.
From the article:
In 2016, the Hill, a Washington, D.C., political publication, printed “Poll: Dems more likely to unfriend people due to political posts,” an account of a study exploring political leanings and unfriending The article said, “The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found 24 percent of Democrats distanced themselves from people on social media because of a political posting. Nine percent of both Republicans and independents reported doing the same to those in social media circles. Additionally, 28 percent of liberals surveyed said they removed someone from their social media circle because of the content that person posted, compared with 8 percent of conservatives.”
That’s very much in line with my own observations, and I think January 6th and the hype around it by the left has exacerbated matters. I’ve had several people say to me the equivalent of, “Surely, though, you see that January 6th was a dangerous un-democratic insurrection…”
Recently I was at a gathering of a group of people, some of whom I’ve known for a long time and some of whom I didn’t know at all. I was talking to a woman I’d never met before, but who for various reasons I was virtually certain was on the left. We were talking about non-political things when suddenly, apropos of nothing, she asked me, “So, isn’t it something, all this latest stuff that’s happening with Trump?” After a pause, I answered that I don’t like to talk about politics. Her response was, “So you don’t follow it.” I couldn’t resist saying, “Actually, I follow it very closely. But I just don’t like to talk about it.” And then I changed the subject rather dramatically. If I hadn’t done that, I think she would have persisted in quizzing me more.
I’ve noticed lately that sort of phenomenon – that some people are determined to talk about politics and have trouble taking no for an answer. What used to be understood – that in most social circles, politics wasn’t something to talk about because it led to such fruitless and bitter arguments – is no longer standard operating procedure. I actually think that, until I refused to answer that woman, it had not even occurred to her that my politics might differ. When I said no, I think it started to occur to her for the first time, and she was having trouble wrapping her mind around the idea that it might be so.
You might ask why I desisted. It’s because I know from bitter experience that most people on the left don’t want an answer that differs from theirs. Instead, they want to be able to bond, to share some political observations – and hopefully some good old Trump-bashing – with a like-minded individual. In that sense, I spoil the party.
